Manchester's own biennale of arts, aptly titled Manchester International Festival, has been going on since 2007. In its fourth year now, the festival looks ever stronger, with an impressive line-up of world-known talent, including Peter Sellars, Kenneth Branagh, Massive Attack vs. Adam Curtis, Margarita Argerich, and many others. 

      One show in particular has a profound Russian connection: it is a play by Robert Wilson after The Old Woman by Daniil Kharms, a renowned Russian absurdist writer. Developed with the assistance of Mikhail Baryshnikov, the production stars him and Willem Dafoe in what promises to be a treat for all eccentrically-minded spectators. 

      According to the festival's official programme, "The Old Woman is an obscure, brilliant and slyly political novella written in the 1930s. Carrying echoes of Beckett and Ionesco in its deadpan narrative, which follows the story of a struggling writer who cannot find peace with himself, The Old Woman is perhaps the finest work by one of the great avant-garde Russian authors".